Cheers & Jeers
Jeers: to decades of delay. Twenty-five years ago, a massive truck bomb exploded in front of the Murrah Building in Oklahoma City, killing 168 people and injuring more than 700. “Toy Story” hit movie theatres. Bill Clinton was the president of the United States. And an independent advisory committee came up with a plan for protected areas in Newfoundland and Labrador — a plan that was shelved and ignored until earlier this year, when members of that committee quit in a very public way because of government inaction. Now, the plan’s back on the front burner. But time is an elastic concept; while the effort may have been on the shelf for 25 full years, the provincial government is offering just a three-week window (until June 22) for individuals to express support for the plan and the 32 areas that are being proposed as being worthy of special protection. (You can find it here if you’re reading this online: https://bit.ly/2m7csmq) To recap: virtually forgotten for 25 years, and now the public gets to give input for three weeks — during a pandemic. Anyone want to hazard a guess about where successive provincial governments stand on the idea of actually wanting to protect more of the untouched, sensitive areas in the province?
Cheers: to every disaster also being a business opportunity. We get letters, lots of letters. Well, actually, nowadays, we get emails — and a good chunk of them are news releases from all sorts of companies suggesting we feature them in news stories. Just as COVID-19 was appearing on people’s radar in March, a new hazardous materials company was being formed in Toronto. Their specialty? COVID-19 cleanup, including, “HAZMAT abatement and the decontamination/sanitization of new, resale and rental homes; commercial spaces; institutions and industrial properties… Emergency cleaning services for COVID-19 outbreaks are also available.” You’ve got to give them points for being quick off the mark and confident about their abilities: “After each cleaning, an environmental engineer inspects the property, conducts a swab test … and provides a certificate so anyone entering the premises will know it has been disinfected and sanitized and is safe to enter.” There are very few clouds that don’t have some form of silver lining.
Cheers: to science. Sometimes, though, you have to wonder if the whole COVID-19 crisis isn’t making smart people wing off in wild directions. Consider these opening sentences from a National Post story: “According to a new study to be published in the July issue of the Journal of Early Human, men with ring fingers that are longer in relation to their index finger may have a higher likelihood of developing milder COVID-19 symptoms and may have a lower chance of dying from the illness.” Now, men, did you all just look at your fingers?